Monthly Archives: September 2018

Last weekend I took a course given by Megan Cleland on needle felting animals. The course was given at Fibrefest in Almonte. It was a small class and Megan gave excellent instruction and demos. I chose to do a Great Blue Heron from one of the photographs taken on a morning walk. I thought I was finished when I left the class but since then I’ve done the back ground 3 times. I then removed a lot of it because it was too busy.

I’ve painted the heron in watercolours several times and that helped me in doing this picture. The felting is easier but takes longer to do even if you don’t remove what you’ve needle felted in place several times.

It is now pinned up on a wall so I can look at it and decide if there is anything else I need to add or change before I mount it.

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There were a lot of Monarch Butterflies around this summer. There is a field nearby full of milkweed and whenever I passed I paused and spent some time watching the Monarchs flutter from plant to plant.

Closer to home, I found this butterfly on a milkweed beside my driveway. I had to look it up to discover that it is a Pearly Eye Butterfly. I took a photograph of it and used that to sketch it using pen and ink and watercolour pencils.

I had taken lots of photographs of the Monarchs and milkweed on my walks but hadn’t yet tried to paint them when I found a dead butterfly on the road. I picked it up and took it home to sketch.

Next I tackled a Monarch from one of my photos. I did the background wet in wet first and added the butterfly afterwards.